Arrrr ye ready for more booty, me mateys?!!? Check out the Event tab in the Shops button for some higher-level versions of weapons from TLAPDs past! There's a L43 Colichemarde for NSC, a L45 for SC, L45 Parrot shoulders for NSC, SC, and NG, and L45 NG Schiavona arm & Rhubarb's Mortar shoulder.

Avast, me hearties! Holiday Boost Extended! Enjoy th' extra credits 'n experience for the rest o'th'week! Ye can rack up an overflowin' chestful in preparation for the numerous holidays that Autumn brings to MQ, so keep a-battlin' all week and tell yer mates.

After a few sentences, I kind of run out of piratey lingo, so I'll just go back to my normal style here... we're already at work on something Korin has in the wings that's brand-new for everyone for this Friday, and planning ahead to add the promised next stage of the SC Extreme challenge for next week.

Also I wanted to clear up a bit of confusion I've seen on the forums regarding the new streamline shop view. The streamlined style of shop is only for permanent shops like Tek's Mechs (and in the future, possibly the Star Captain Club shops, for example - only for equipment that is intended to be available permanently) so you will still be able to see and buy all levels of Holiday and One-Day style rares. (And by the way, thanks for the bug reports in Gremlins - this morning, Korin fixed the issue where nothing was showing up in your inventory - you might still see an error message flash sometimes, but check your inventory after your Tek's Mechs purchase and you should have your new equipment.)

Hope you arr havin' a fine time talkin' like Pirates, and gatherin' Pieces of Eight!

That's right, folks. It's time for Talk Like a Pirate Day. Well almost. It's certainly close enough for us to have a nice weekend event about it. We have a 15% bonus for Star Captains in effect right now and a 10% bonus in experience and credits for non-Star Captains so start farming! I'm only planning on having the boost available the end of Monday. The event shops will remain until Friday. Plenty of time to get some cool stuff from yesteryears and this year.

Next week I want to get the salvage quest working which may require a few more happy new weapons and meanwhile, I'd like to get Maegwyn and company to start working on the next story content since we haven't had a chance to start yet.

Also, I heard your complaints and Tek's shop no longer removes items from the shops below your level. It only hides weapons that are above your level + 3 so as you level up, you'll be seeing cool new stuff pop in. I say "you" but I basically mean new players. I'm sure you understand.

So things are coming along. I hope you all talk like pirates. I'm terrible at pirate-talking. Enjoy the fancy new weapons. Minar colored the Blundergat and the Flintlock and I did a hack job with the colors for the Cutlass. I'm terrible with colors D: I did design the tresure chest for the minigame though. I think that came out pretty.

Char took an amazing photo of MQ's intro to the MechQuest portion of the panel - we gave away hand-painted t-shirts and called all the recipients up to the front! Korin's Minions en masse!

There is a story behind the shirts, actually... They were having a sale at a craft store that isn't far from where I live , and when I saw the brown shirts I bought... all of them! I believe the final count was 18, which accounts for the ones given away to Korin and Lyris plus I'm not sure who was too shy to come up to the front for the panel. I made a few here at home, but was nowhere near done by the time I got on the plane for DragonCon. The bus from the Secret Underground Lab arrived a couple of hours after I landed in Atlanta, so that gave me time to sit in the lobby of the Marriott Marquis and letter all of the shirt backs with www.mechquest.com in (theoretically) glow-in-the-dark fabric paint. I got a few of the faces finished - but the bag outline is puffy paint, and takes a while to dry, so I saved that for later. I was planning to recruit Charfade and Jemini and others - but everyone went to bed early, and Korin & I were the only ones awake! So, we sat outside my hotel room up on the 32rd floor of the Marriott (so as not to awaken Geopetal) and drew Korin bagheads under some very hot lights. Korin was wearing this awesome shirt that looked like a horse converted into a dragon - well, we had some visitors who saw us making the shirts & stopped to comment... turned out that one of them actually printed the shirt he was wearing! What are the odds of THAT???

Minions all in a row!

Korin quietly handed the finished ones to me and I lined them up to dry on the floor of our room - I'm hoping the image I uploaded isn't too big to fit on DNs. Anyway, again in theory, if you got a t-shirt we did some of the eyes in what they call glow-in-the-dark fabric paint so you might also have glowing eyes!

So what's up for this week & upcoming releases? I just finished the newsletter which you should get soon, and then Korin said this on the forums, in case you missed it:

I'm working on another quest that should prove to be a good grind quest because it will give you the chance to get salvage weapons for nearly nothing. The idea is that you'll play on a map and every kill you get will have a drop chance. You can claim the drop but it won't be functional. Take it to a repairman and for a small fee, blam. Potentially powerful weapon. The weapons will display the level tier that they're in such as 11 meaning it's 11-20, 21 meaning 21-30, etc. It will also let you know what the equip slot the weapon is. So if you're grinding for a weapon, and you're finding weapons that aren't needed, you can just sell the junk without redeeming it.

I'd love to get it out next week but if it doesn't look like it, we have other plans for that. I believe we were plotting for TLAPD. Thiw week we're trying to build up Tek's level 10+ shops for the new interface. This should help the teen players and we're also trying to dip into the suggestion weapons for it albeit we started a little late on that D:

Meanwhile, Arklen has the other 2 house mech files and is currently working on them. Runehawk's animations were shown off at DragonCon and everyone was super impressed.

Anyways, I have much to do in the background to make this new loot function work so I'll get back to it. This week will be Tek weapons (which I believe some are now getting specials) and next week will be TLAPD! And arrrr it'd be a shame if ye pirates didn't earn any extra booty for TLAPD weekend, wouldn't it?

Thanks, Korin! Yes indeed, we are plotting for Talk Like A Pirate Day for next week's release, for the whole weekend!! For this week we are buffing some of Tek's existing weapons - a couple of them are getting specials designed by blues, coded by Vivi (which I might also help with if I finish with the bugfixing to the Alamonia and Khaeldron files) and I will set up some for the "teen" levels to fill some of those gaps as we go along. Minar - despite our late start for the week - is working on drawing a couple of the player suggestion weapons, and Korin will animate those - so if all goes well those will appear in Tek's with the Friday release too! (If not this week, next week.)

I'm going to be the "best man" in a wedding next week so I think I'll need to have all the TLAPD stuff completed by early Thursday. (Bachelorette party is Thursday evening - I pick up my dress from the tailor Friday - yep, wearing a dress, not a tux - and there's a rehearsal dinner Friday & then the wedding is on Saturday. So another hectic and short work-week on my end again, but I'll be back on the forums and facebook and twitter and all, as soon as things calm down a bit!) Thanks for playing MQ!